NEW WELSH REVIEW

Reviews

Reviews that do not appear in the magazine... Watch this space- It is regularly updated!

A Song for Issy Bradley (Carys Bray) (Issue: 107)

Suzy Ceulan Hughes believes in the intense veracity and compassion of this debut novel, from an author of Welsh-Mormon extraction, about the death of a child and the pressures of a faith community.read more...

Advantages of the Older Man (Gwyneth Lewis) (Issue: 107)

Amy McCauley concludes that while there are moments of poetry in this kooky novella about the ghost of Dylan Thomas, on the whole it’s sprawlingly camp and often mystifying.read more...

Hippy Dinners (Abbie Ross) (Issue: 107)

Alan Bilton enjoys a memoir about a girl’s conformity but argues that ultimately, normalcy is achieved at something of a cost.

Vicky MacKenzie asserts that while Quantum physics provides neat analogies to frame Lewis’ thoughts on the composition of poetry, her strengths here lie in the astounding richness and diversity of her ideas about poetry.read more...

Significance (Jo Mazelis) (Issue: 107)

While paying respects to the murder mystery, what Dan Bradley finds striking here is the tight focus on individual experience and perception over plot; ultimately, however, the
novel falls between the stools of literary and genre.read more...

The Girl Who Lived on Air: The Mystery of Sarah Jacob, The Welsh Fasting Girl (Stephen Wade) (Issue: 107)

Carol Taaffe finds that while this book presents Sarah Jacob’s case as an historical mystery, at its simplest this is the story of a child who was allowed to die.read more...

The House of the Deaf Man (Peter Krištúfek) (Issue: 107)

This vast historical family drama offers readers a privileged vantage point from which to watch a nation write (and then promptly edit and re-edit) its history, Phillip Clement writes.read more...

The Redemption of Galen Pike and Other Stories (Carys Davies) (Issue: 107)

Angharad Penrhyn Jones highly rates a short fiction author of originality and imagination, indeed one of the finest short story writers in the UK.read more...

Under An African Sky: A Journey to the Frontline of Climate Change (Peter Hudson) (Issue: 107)

In a market of tired wanderlust, writes Chris Moss, this book attempts something new and rather different, and will appeal to the well-travelled, language-learning, culturally curious adventurous soul.read more...

Phillip Clement surveys recent publications from Hafan Books, one of stories of Algerian human rights abuses, the other covering the terrains of Edward Lear, Becket and Barkerread more...

Estuary (Issue: 106)

Vicky MacKenzie admires a book of images, poetry and prose about the River Yar estuary, and finds that here nature is yearned for but is not always an easy consolationread more...

Red Love: The Story of an East German Family (Craig Thomas) (Issue: 107)

Maxim Leo’s memoir, spanning four generations living in the GDR, is a fascinating, often poignant account of a conflicted family, struggling with issues of ideology, loyalty and identity, writes Craig Thomasread more...

New Monkey (Stevie Krayer) (Issue: 106)

Phillip Clement assesses a poetry collection, by Stevie Krayer, which is positioned between traditional ecologue and spiritual guidebookread more...

Three Graves Full (Jamie Mason) (Issue: 106)

Dan y Wenallt (Issue: 106)

Mari Ellis Dunning reviews the new Welsh-language film version of Under Milk Wood (Dan y Wenallt), starring Charlotte Church and Rhys Ifans, which premieres on S4C tonight, 27 December. The English-language version will be released in cinemas next yearread more...

Stormteller (David Thorpe) (Issue: 106)

Our resident teenage critic reviews a Young Adult novel set in Ceredigion but finds it very disappointing indeedread more...

British Story: A Romance (Michael Nath) (Issue: 106)

Éadaoín Lynch finds that British Story offers an erudite, fond and meticulous account of character, both in its personae and spirit

The Parrots (Fillipo Bologna, trans Howard Curtis) (Issue: 106)

Phillip Clement admires a satire by Fillipo Bologna that joyfully charts the escapades and self-machinated failures of three grown men jockeying for position in the fetishistic world of Italian literary prizesread more...

Tryweryn (Claudia Williams, ed Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan) (Issue: 106)

While Amy McCauley applauds the sentiment of this book in response to mid century UK land-grabbing of Wales, she finds Claudia Williams' paintings too generic and sentimental, especially in contrast to the power of the Geoff Charles photographs included.read more...

American Interior (Gruff Rhys) (Issue: 106)

Amy McCauley asks whether Gruff Rhys is a victim of his own ambition in this quirky nonfiction title about following his ancestor’s search for a Welsh-speaking American tribe.read more...

Berlin: Imagine a City (Rory MacLean) (Issue: 106)

Berlin is the archetypal city of becoming; the ability of this ambitious travel-biography to capture and celebrate that enigmatic quality impresses Chris Moss.read more...

A master of both Italian and Welsh landscapes, Wilson’s international reputation has been dogged for being either ‘not quite British enough’ nor Welsh enough, discovers Tracey Warr.read more...

Story Volume 1 and Story Volume 2 (Dai Smith (ed)) (Issue: 106)

Prof Tony Brown takes issue with this editor’s implicit assumption that only short stories which directly engage with the social, economic or political pressures of Welsh life, primarily the industrial life of south Wales, are of interest; but also acknread more...

The Moor: Lives, Landscape, Literature (William Atkins) (Issue: 106)

Atkins, without ignoring moorland’s darker qualities, captures a cycle of seasonal birth and decay, as well as its depopulation; Chris Moss finds this a moving, entertaining and engrossing read.read more...

Miners at the Quarry Pool (Nigel Jarrett) (Issue: 105)

The Hunting Gun (Yasushi Inoue) (Issue: 105)

An astonishing debut from one of Japan’s most prolific and respected authors is, at once, a haunting story of love and loneliness and a meditation on how we reach out through writing, Dan Bradley writes.read more...

Half Plus Seven (Dan Tyte) (Issue: 105)

When the Roads Meet (Dan Llewelyn Hall) (Issue: 105)

Ellen Bell, reviewing the exhibition catalogue of Dan Lleweyn Hall’s When the Roads Meet, finds it a deftly produced series of works that reflects a bountiful history of great painting but fails to communicate an authentic, genuinely felt, vision.read more...

Short Days, Long Shadows (Sheenagh Pugh) (Issue: 105)

Sheenagh Pugh’s twelfth poetry collection is her response to the landscape of Shetland, and always leaves the door open for hoperead more...

The Poet and the Private Eye (Rob Gittins) (Issue: 105)

Naomi Garnault enjoys a novel, based on a true story, about a detective hired by Times magazine to track Dylan Thomas in order to defend his libel case against them.read more...

Tonypandemonium (Rachel Trezise ) (Issue: 105)

Jonathan Edwards admires prose writer Rachel Trezise’s debut play, set in her native valley but focused on a mother-daughter dysrelationship and the tragedy of time

Ugly Bus (Mike Thomas) (Issue: 105)

For Chris Moss this Cardiff-set crime novel by an ex-cop rings true, offering something akin to a new brand of working-class fiction bridging the televisual and the literary.read more...

Water (Lloyd Jones (trans Lloyd Jones)) (Issue: 105)

While Angharad Penrhyn Jones urges authors to explore the problems of climate change within a Welsh context, for her this novel beats the drum of protest at the expense of structure, viewpoint and characterisation.read more...

Openings: A European Journal (Jeremy Hooker) (Issue: 104)

Ellie Rees enjoys a book in which an English poet feels hiraeth for the south of Englandread more...

The Third Tower: Journeys in Italy (Antal Szerb) (Issue: 104)

Jemma L King enjoys a ‘perfect’ book by Antal Szerb, both in terms of content and aesthetics, and is enlightened by its first-hand account of Mussolini’s Italyread more...

The Undressed (Jemma L King) (Issue: 104)

These poems of a cache of antique pornography are haunting, distinctive and sensual, marking Jemma L King out as poet with considerable range, argues Phillip Clementread more...

Shine (Candy Gourlay) (Issue: 104)

Now school’s out here’s our summer book reading recommendation from teenager book blogger Maya Woodread more...

His Last Fire (Alix Nathan) (Issue: 104)

Emma Whitney is intrigued by a confident, learned and engaging debut collection set in post-Enlightenment Englandread more...

Elder (David Constantine) (Issue: 104)

For Éadaoín Lynch, David Constantine's tenth collection, on themes of nature and artifice, beauty and austerity, and reality and the supernatural, is masterful. read more...

Subtly Worded (Alicia Byrne Keane) (Issue: 104)

Alicia Byrne Keane find that this prose collection is important as a contribution to the Russian classics – while there is something of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina in Teffi’s nuanced depictions of family life, the author offers a new and hitherto unread more...

Amy McCauley admires this book on an overlooked aspect of Keith Vaughan's work on the male form: his photography, prints and draughtsmanship. read more...

Six Pounds Eight Ounces (Rhian Elizabeth) (Issue: 104)

In her debut novel, Rhian Elizabeth’s precocious five-year-old protagonist showcases a narrative voice that is beautifully self-assured, coaxing the reader into the growing pains of a girl experimenting with truth, fiction and Tonypandy.read more...

Vicky Mackenzie concludes that while a slice of Thomas’ and Kazin’s private life is here made public for the first time and although the letters offer some new gems for fans, it’s doubtful whether they offer a significant contribution to our understread more...

Word on the Street (Romy Wood) (Issue: 103)

Drysalter (Michael Symmons Roberts) (Issue: 102)

Victoria Mackenzie admires the latest Forward winner, a formally ambitious tribute to The Book of Psalms, poems on subjects from karaoke booths, motorways, the Garden of Eden and the nature of the soul read more...

American Smoke, Journeys to the End of the Light (Iain Sinclair) (Issue: 103)

The Tip of My Tongue (And Some Other Weapons As Well) (Trezza Azzopardi) (Issue: 103)

Gee Williams finds that the author of this zombie-Western debut novel has set himself a massive challenge.read more...

Crown of Thorns (Bethany W Pope) (Issue: 102)

Jonathan Doyle is highly impressed both by the technical ambition and the emotional rawness of this collection by Bethany W Poperead more...

Poetry and Privacy (John Redmond) (Issue: 102)

John Redmond champions introverted poems by the likes of Seamus Heaney, John Burnside and Robert Minhinnick, arguing that to yoke works to themes of broad public interest is not always in the poems’ interestread more...

Dream On (Dai Smith) (Issue: 102)

Ffion Lindsay highly recommends this novel to anyone with an interest in Welsh history, but beware: this novel will demand your full attentionread more...

America’s Mistress: The Life and Times of Eartha Kitt ( John L Williams) (Issue: 102)

Amy McCauley is disappointed by this impressionistic account of diva Eartha Kitt.read more...

The Story of Antigone (Ali Smith (retelling of classical myth)) (07/01/2014)

Hook, Line & Singer, A Sing-along Book (Cerys Matthews) (Issue: 102)

Later (Philip Gross) (Issue: 102)

Tony Brown lauds a collection that consistently grips, involves and challenges, confirming its author as one of our most consistently interesting and skilful poets read more...

The Drive (Tyler Keevil) (Issue: 102)

Alan Bilton finds an author whose charm is set to stun in this hilarious and engaging anti-Kerouac road novelread more...

Enemy of the Ants (Stephan Valentin, translated from the German by Moira Kerr) (Issue: 101)

Stephan Valentin’s first novel, Enemy of the Ants, is a first-person, minute-by-minute account of three days in the life of Jonas, an alienated, friendless child with a mother full-term with his sibling, 'the football'. read more...

The North End of the Possible (Andrew Philip) (Issue: 101)

The North End of Possible, by Andrew Philip, gives us possible answers to the big questions through poetry that is politically charged, linguistically rich and varied and emotionally engagingread more...

The Forgetting and Remembering of Air (Sue Hubbard) (Issue: 101)

Hubbard, a poet envious of the artist, tries ‘to write a line of colour’. And she does, masterfully, in her collection The Forgetting and Remembering of Airread more...

A Kingdom (James Hanley) (Issue: 101)

This new edition of A Kingdom brings a neglected work of lyrical prose to light, one that explores the complexities of two estranged sisters coming to terms with the loss of their overbearing father, and the author’s experiences of home and attachment.read more...

The Rice Paper Diaries (Francesca Rhydderch) (Issue: 101)

The Rivalry of Flowers (Shani Rhys James (with others)) (Issue: 101)

Anne Price-Owen explores these wars of the posies where the enemy of woman is a flower, her mother or the wallpaper.read more...

The Scattering (Jaki McCarrick) (Issue: 101)

Nigel Rodenhurst is disappointed by this short fiction collection by an award-winning Irish author.read more...

Between Two Rivers (Dorothy Al Khafaji) (Issue: 100)

Memoir of two decades of marriage and life in Iraq by British-born writerread more...

Air Histories (Christopher Meredith ) (Issue: 100)

Air Histories connects our own lived histories with moving stories of humanity drawn in a weathered landscape of changing horizons and shifting air.read more...

The Messenger (LM Shakespeare ) (Issue: 100)

The Messenger is a novel which will divide readers, with some appreciating its heartfelt values and others feeling a lack of sophistication.read more...

God Loves You (Kathryn Maris ) (Issue: 100)

Most impressive in God Loves You is Kathryn Maris’ exploration of our fraught emotional lives which yields a poetry of pathos, irreverence and humour; this is a surprising post-confessional voiceread more...

The Moss Gatherers (Tia Jones) (Issue: 100)

Megan Jones reviews a novel set in a Welsh farming community which dissects manipulative marital relationships.read more...

She Inserts the Key (Marianne Burton) (Issue: 100)

Forward Best Collection contender She Inserts the Key by Marianne Burton, reviewed by Kittie Belltreeread more...

The Crawshay Portraits exhibition at the National Museum of Wales (Issue: 100)

The Faces of Wales are Hidden, exhibition review, Crawshay Portraits, National Museum of Wales until 22 September 2013read more...

The Ninjas (Jane Yeh) (Issue: 99)

The Roaring Boys (John Barnie) (Issue: 99)

Kym Martindale enjoys a poetry collection of exquisite irony and pathos on death, air guitar and other life-changing mattersread more...

Scars (Juan José Saer, Translation, Steve Dolph) (Issue: 98)

This is a book that demands to be re-read. And because it is – for the most part – a brilliant piece of writing, I’ll probably acquiesce.read more...

Loudness (Judy Brown) (Issue: 98)

This poetry collection, shortlisted for the Forward Prize Best First Collection, 2011, and the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, 2012, is set amid grey concrete, city streets and close rooms, where human contact is often ‘wedged into narrow spaceread more...

You, Me and the Birds (Alan Kellerman) (Issue: 98)

There is excellence in You, Me and the Birds, plenty of it, and some truly gorgeous moments.read more...

Camelion (Richard Poole) (Issue: 98)

Gods, vampires and animals all make an appearance in this ambitious amalgam of verse.read more...

Beasts of the Southern Wild, Film Review (Issue: 98)

This Academy Award- nominated film tells the story of Hushpuppy, a five-year old girl growing up on a small island known as The Bathtub, which is under constant threat of flooding and where the people are happy despite being poor. read more...

Bistro (Kate North) (Issue: 98)

Bistro, Kate North’s debut collection of poetry, invites the reader to embark on a unique journey through her world.read more...

The Mind-Body Problem (Katha Pollitt ) (Issue: 98)

Reading this collection left reviewer Pippa Marland with the lingering feeling of having been on a journey from which she emerged subtly changed – sadder, wiser, but somehow ‘lit within’.read more...

Ras Olaf Harri Selwyn (Tony Bianchi ) (Issue: 98)

Knock ’em Cold, Kid (Elaine Morgan) (Issue: 97)

Elaine Morgan’s remarkable success in overcoming barriers of class, national and gender discrimination, and her willingness to polemicise on behalf of the Aquatic Ape Theory, suggest a degree of travail and a steely side to her character that this her aread more...

Leaving the Atocha Station (Ben Lerner) (Issue: 97)

Leaving the Atocha Station has earned praise from Paul Auster, Hanri Kurzu and Jonathan Franzen. Perhaps what makes this novel timely is its charm, intelligence and humour.read more...

The Bridle (Meryl Pugh) (Issue: 97)

The twenty-four poems in Meryl Pugh’s The Bridle are centered on themes of storytelling, memory, myth, the juxtaposition of body and mind and what it means to have been born female. read more...

Cheval 5 (Aida Birch, Alan Perry (eds)) (Issue: 97)

An anthology of poetry and prose submitted for the 2012 Terry Hetherington Award.read more...

Aria/Anika (Sudeep Sen) (Issue: 97)

Despite its preoccupation with categorisation and precision, Aria/Anika comes across as a mishmash, a casting of sticks all higgledy-piggledy, a complex arrangement, but at its best it is a work of startling beauty and will add lustre to the career of oneread more...

Thrown into Nature (Milen Ruskov) (Issue: 97)

With a wonderful carefree nature to its voice and a fantastic economy of prose, Thrown into Nature is a lucid mirror to money, evil and charlatanism from one of Bulgaria’s greatest living writers.

Married Love (Tessa Hadley) (Issue: 97)

The Marriage Plot (Jeffrey Eugenides) (Issue: 97)

Jeffrey Eugenides has cultivated a reputation as one of the safest hands in modern fiction, and his new novel The Marriage Plot topped international best-seller lists and won the 2011 Salon Book Award.read more...

When I Was A Child I Read Books (Marilynne Robinson) (Issue: 97)

Pulitzer prizewinner Marilynne Robinson, in her latest collection of essays, warns against ‘retreating from the cultivation and celebrating of learning and of beauty, by dumbing down....'read more...

This September Sun (Bryony Rheam) (Issue: 97)

A unique insight into a post-colonial country, personalising a political struggle from the perspective of three generations of Rhodesians and capturing the fractious nature of life in decline.read more...

Tair Rheol Anrhefn (Daniel Davies) (11/01/2012)

Midwinterblood (Marcus Sedgwick) (10/01/2012)

This latest Young Adult novel from Marcus Sedgwick has a most unusual plot construction...read more...

Blow on a Dead Man's Embers (Mari Strachan) (09/12/2011)

Mari Strachan's second novel, is set in a quiet Welsh village just after the First World War.read more...

The Meeting Point (Lucy Caldwell) (05/12/2011)

The winner of this year University of Wales Dylan Thomas prize, announced last month, is an old-fashioned book. This was my first impression of Lucy Caldwell's The Meeting Point, which the novelty of it being my first novel on an e-reader (Sony)read more...

Dark Matter (Michelle Paver) (30/11/2011)

Having never actually read a contemporary ghost story, I wondered whether people's assertions that 'books are scarier than films' was in fact true.read more...

And God Created Burton (Tom Rubython) (16/11/2011)

This latest biography by Tom Rubython attempts to delve into the life of arguably the most successful Welsh actor of all time. And God Created Burton takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride through history...read more...

The City With Horns (Tamar Yoseloff) (08/11/2011)

This review focuses on the main sequence in this collection. Several poems in The City With Horns explore the literal and metaphorical ways we grasp at understanding. read more...

The Sense of an Ending (Julian barnes) (21/10/2011)

The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes' latest novel and the book that (finally) this week won him the Man Booker Prize, is a thin book impregnated with fat ideas....read more...

The internet has been in popular use in the UK for 20 years. Now that is has, essentially, come of age, a string of books has been released examining the effects of the internet on humanity.read more...

Love Child (Herbert Williams) (09/09/2011)

There has never been a more apt time than now to read Herbert Williams' most recent novel :Love Child.read more...

On paper, Colm Toibin and Emma Donoghue are writers working very much in the same style..read more...

The Tiger's Wife (Téa Obreht ) (11/08/2011)

As I went to Waterstone's to ask for a copy of the 2011 Orange Prize Winner, the shop assistant rather anxiously informed me that they only had three copies to begin with and that these copies had all sold out within a day...read more...

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